Romney responds to Bain attacks, says he helped create 100k jobs

5/16/12 2:55 PM EDT

Mitt Romney, who has been silent up to this point on the Obama campaign's extensive attacks on his private equity career, defended his experience in an interview with conservative blogger Ed Morissey, distancing himself from the closing of a steel factory at a Bain-owned company and accusing the president of talking out of both sides of his mouth on private equity.

Here's what he said:

The most recent attacks are really off target and I think they know. They said, oh, gosh, Gov. Romney at Bain Capital closed down a steel factory. But the problem, of course, is that the steel factory closed down two years after I left Bain Capital. I was no longer there. So that’s hardly something that was done on my watch. And of course they don’t mention a couple of other things. One is that we were able to help create over 100,000 jobs and secondly, on the president’s watch, about 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry, in auto dealers and auto manufacturers. So, you know, he’s hardly one to point a finger. Oh, and by the way, he has no problem going out and doing fundraisers with Bain Capital and private equity people …

As a matter of fact, [Bain and the Blackstone Group, where the president is raising money] have made investments together over our history. I have respect for them and much of the work that they do. And you know, I think the president is just misguided in his effort to try and divide Americans from one another, to try and disparage one part of economy from another or one person from another. That’s really not what America is. If there are bad actors, why, you know, that needs to be pointed out. But that’s certainly not the case for a whole industry.

Much of this is familiar material. Romney has drawn an equivalency in the past between Obama's intervention in the auto industry — which resulted in dealership closings — and Bain Capital's work in the private sector. The 100,000-jobs claim about his own career is one he's made on and off throughout the campaign.

The context is obviously very different this time, as it's Romney's first attempt to defend his record at length in the face of a Democratic assault. We'll see whether that's enough to get the job done. What many Republicans are saying privately is that Romney will ultimately need to do more than give a defensive account of his time leading Bain Capital, and actually outline in some detail the positive work he did there.

As my colleague Ginger Gibson noted this morning, Romney has yet to raise Bain in his public events this week or take questions on the subject from the press corps as a whole.